expectedly attacked by the brave Dexippus, who, flying with the
engineer Cleodamus from the sack of Athens, collected a hasty band of
volunteers, peasants as well as soldiers, and in some measure avenged
the calamities of his country. [123]

[Footnote 120: Syncellus (p. 382) speaks of this expedition, as
undertaken by the Heruli.]

[Footnote 121: Strabo, l. xi. p. 495.]

[Footnote 122: Plin. Hist. Natur. iii. 7.]

[Footnote 123: Hist. August. p. 181. Victor, c. 33. Orosius, vii. 42.
Zosimus, l. i. p. 35. Zonaras, l. xii. 635. Syncellus, p. 382. It is
not without some attention, that we can explain and conciliate their
imperfect hints. We can still discover some traces of the partiality of
Dexippus, in the relation of his own and his countrymen's exploits. *
Note: According to a new fragment of Dexippus, published by Mai, the 2000
men took up a strong position in a mountainous and woods district,
and kept up a harassing warfare. He expresses a hope of being speedily
joined by the Imperial fleet. Dexippus in rov. Byzantinorum Collect a
Niebuhr, p. 26, 8--M.]

But this exploit, whatever lustre it might shed on the declining age of
Athens, served rather to irritate than to subdue the undaunted spirit
of the northern invaders. A general conflagration blazed out at the same
time in every district of Greece. Thebes and Argos, Corinth and Sparta,
which had formerly waged such memorable wars against each other, were
now unable to bring an army into the field, or even to defend their
ruined fortifications. The rage of war, both by land and by sea, spread
from the eastern point of Sunium to the western coast of Epirus. The
Goths had already advanced within sight of Italy, when the approach of
such imminent danger awakened the indolent Gallienus from his dream of
pleasure. The emperor appeared in arms; and his presence seems to have
checked the ardor, and to have divided the strength, of the enemy.
Naulobatus, a chief of the Heruli, accepted an honorable capitulation,
entered with a large body of his countrymen into the service of Rome,
and was invested with the ornaments of the consular dignity, which
had never before been profaned by the hands of a barbarian. [124] Great
numbers of the Goths, disgusted with the perils and hardships of a
tedious voyage, broke into Maesia, with a design of forcing their way
over the Danube to their settlements in the Ukraine. The wild attempt
would have proved inevitable destruction, if the di